The French and British--less so the Germans, Russians, Spanish, Portugese, Italians, and Swiss--have had a long tradition of what is called Orientalism, a way of coming to terms with the Orient that is based on the Orient's special place in the European experience.

The Orient is not only adjacent to Europe but also the place of Europe's greatest, richest and oldest colonies. It the source of civilizations and languages, its cultural contestant, and one of its deepest and most recurring images. In addition, the Orient has helped to define Europe as its contrasting image, idea, personality, and experience.

The Orient is an integral part of European material civilization and culture. Orientalism expresses and represents that part culturally and even ideologically as a a mode of discourse with supporting institutions, vocabulary, scholarship, imagery, doctrines, even colonial bureaucracies and colonial styles.

Related to academic tradition, a more general meaning for Orientalism is a style of thought based upon the distinction made between "the Orient" and "the Occident". A very large mass of writers, among who are poets, novelists, philosophers, artists, and economists, have accepted the basic distinction between East and West as the starting point for elaborate accounts concerning the Orient, its people, customs, and destiny.

Orientalism as it is studied deals principally, not with a correspondence between Orientalism and Orient, but with the internal consistency of Orientalism and its ideas about the Orient.